Roads & Properties

No 24g

Magdalene Almshouses

1844 Tythe No 274 poor houses

The hospital of St Mary consisted originally of a C13 hall, which served as the living and sleeping rooms of the inmates with a chapel at the E end Through the C14 alterations, with the hall being unroofed, and the cubicles that lined the outer walls have given place to two rows of small houses, which have encroached on the hall as to reduce it to a narrow passage Extensive repairs took place in the early C18.
Not suppressed in the C16.
The hospital is now disused. The S row of almshouses has been demolished and their foundations laid out as an ornamental garden. Although the chapel was formerly called St Mary's more recently it has been known as St Margaret's.
A range of stone dwellings running E-W with five doorways the second and fourth now blocked, the others with doors, windows above the slate roof apparently in good repair. A passage way separates these five from a well cared for garden with lawn and flower beds on the S occupying the site of the now levelled opposing range. At the W end of the passage an archway gives access to a new housing complex for old people on the site of the hospital garden. The chapel at the E end is in excellent repair and in use, the gable at its W end has space for two bells, one of which is still in position.